Luna Priestess

Two Alphas

By dinner, everyone knew.

I could feel it the second I walked into the hall...the way conversations dipped when I passed, the way eyes followed me to my seat, and then very deliberately looked away.

Pack wolves are good at pretending not to stare. They’re not that good.

Rhys sat beside me, tense as a drawn bowstring, and didn’t say a word about it, which somehow made it worse.

Across the hall, Kaius sat at the head table where an Alpha’s supposed to sit, jaw tight, eyes flicking toward me every few minutes like he couldn’t help it.

Voss sat two seats down from him.

He hadn’t stopped watching me since I walked in.

“He’s staring,” Rhys muttered.

“I noticed.”

“So has he.” A nod toward Kaius. “This is a great dinner. Really enjoying this dinner.”

I would’ve laughed if I weren’t so busy trying not to be sick.

It got worse after the plates were cleared.

Voss made his way over before I’d even finished my wine, dropping into the empty seat on my other side like he’d been invited, which he hadn’t been.

“Priestess.” That same easy grin. “I believe we have unfinished business.”

“I don’t think we do.”

“You froze up on me in that courtyard for a full ten seconds. I’d call that unfinished.” He leaned in, lowering his voice just enough that it felt like a secret between us, which I hated, because I didn’t want any secrets with this man.

“I’ve never seen a Priestess do that before. Have you?”

“I’m not discussing this with you.”

“Fair enough.” He didn’t move away. If anything, he leaned in closer.

“You know, most Priestesses I’ve met are all incense and empty smiles. You’re different. I like different.”

“Voss.”

The voice cut across the table like a blade. Kaius was on his feet, and I hadn’t even seen him move.

Every conversation in the hall died at once.

“Draven.” Voss didn’t get up, didn’t even fully turn to look at him, which I got the sense was deliberate, a small cruelty dressed up as boredom.

“Something wrong?”

“You’re sitting too close to my guest.”

“Your guest? Last I checked, the Priestess belongs to the Temple, not to whichever pack happens to be hosting her this week.” Voss finally turned, and his grin had gone sharper, less friendly.

“Unless there’s something you’d like to tell the room, Draven.”

The air went thin. I could feel every wolf in that hall leaning forward without moving, the way a pack does right before something breaks.

“Get up,” Kaius said. Quiet. Flat. Worse than if he’d shouted it.

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll make you.”

Voss laughed, short and humourless, and rose from the chair slowly, unhurried, the way a predator moves when it wants you to know it isn’t afraid of you.

The two of them stood there across the width of that table, and for one horrible second, I genuinely thought I was about to watch two Alphas tear each other apart over a woman neither of them actually knew.

“Stop.” My own voice surprised me, coming out louder than I meant it to. Both of them looked at me. So did every wolf in that hall. “Both of you. Sit down.”

Neither of them sat down.

“Priestess,” Voss said, not taking his eyes off Kaius, “I don’t think you understand what’s happening here.”

“I understand exactly what’s happening. Two grown men are about to embarrass themselves in front of five packs over a mate-pull neither of them can explain, and if you don’t sit down right now, I am going to walk out of this hall and let the both of you explain to your Councils exactly why the Priestess refused to finish the summit rites.”

That landed. I watched it land, watched something calculate behind both their eyes at the same time, the political cost of exactly what I’d threatened.

Kaius sat first. Voss followed a beat later, jaw tight, clearly hating that he had.

The hall didn’t relax. If anything, the murmur that had been building all evening finally broke loose, low and fast, wolf to wolf, table to table, and I didn’t need the Sight to know exactly what they were all saying.

Did you see that. Two Alphas, both of them, over the Priestess. That’s not normal. That’s not supposed to be possible.

Rhys’s hand found my arm under the table, steady, grounding, the only calm thing in the whole room.

“We need to leave,” he said quietly. “Now, before this gets any worse.”

I nodded, and let him pull me up from the table, and didn’t look back at either Alpha as we walked out, though I could feel both of their eyes on me the entire way to the door.

We made it into the hallway before I let myself fall apart, just slightly, my back against the cold stone wall, breath coming fast.

“That can’t happen again,” I said. “Rhys, that cannot happen again.”

“I know.”

“Every wolf in that hall knows something’s wrong with me now. It’s not going to stay quiet. It can’t. Not after that.”

“I know,” he said again, and this time his voice had gone rough, worried in a way that scared me more than anything Voss or Kaius had said all night.

“Lyra. I need to ask you something, and I need you to actually answer me this time.”

“What?”

He hesitated, and in that hesitation I saw something I hadn’t let myself think about yet, something that had clearly been sitting in the back of his mind for days.

“If it happened with both of them,” he said slowly, “what happens if it happens again. With someone else.”

I didn’t have an answer.

I didn’t want to find out.